Laila. The suffering the girl goes through drives her insane and eventually turns her into an Empty Shell.

Morathai. At age six, his entire family except one sister is killed, his kingdom is destroyed and his mentor pulls a Heroic Sacrifice in the span of one day. Then he ends up living on the streets, has his kindness rewarded with betrayal, and is captured by slavers. Guess who ends up buying him?

Jasmine. Mozenrath’s false warnings push her to a Heroic BSOD trying to figure out his plan, to the point she starts alienating and lying to her friends in case Mozenrath has a way of watching what she’s doing. She then ends up losing her memories of Aladdin while delving into the Mirror of Fiereve, watching her father nearly die of poison, and finally is brutally Mind Raped by Mirage for a week. And yet despite all this, she keepsgoing.

In A Castle Of Silence And Bones Yao was invaded, defeated, humiliated, his siblings are dead and their people annihilated, he has seen the world break apart and countries perish over decades of war, now his obsessive younger brother is all Yandere for him, violating him, insulting his masculinity, keeping him trapped emotionally, mentally and physically. In the end, China shoots Japan and kills him.

Human Curiosity: Poor Liechtenstein. Forced to leave her brother in the HCS facility (under his orders, but still!), nearly kidnapped a second time, and learning that her brother was killed. Oh, and when she tries to find some peace by seeing her brother's retrieved body, she finds that all of the Nations have vanished and that the floor is covered in blood and water. This understandably does nothing for her peace of mind.

Hanatarou in Winter War has witnessed Rukia's hollowfication and death, Byakuya's apparent suicide, been enslaved in Hueco Mundo, his captain is MIA after escaping the lab, had several of his squad members killed in front of him, including Ogidou, who had just saved his life, and currently has a collar around his neck that could detonate at any moment. And with all that he still manages to be the Only Sane Man half of the time.

Bardot does this to Penny in Play The Game not long after her and Rudy's capture. He tells her a detailed story of how her father was killed and even shows her his tooth, which Bardot ripped away from him. Then later, he pours salt in the wound by eating her father's severed arm right in front of her. Needless to say, Penny did not react so well to that.

Late in the story, he re-breaks her and breaks Rudy as well by having Droaw drag Penny out of the room, declaring his intent to keep them separated until they die. He then follows up by ripping Rudy's arm open.

He breaks Barney prior to the story. He hunts him down for information. At first, Barney refuses, which prompts Bardot to start his torture. He breaks his legs one by one, and when that wasn't enough, Bardot completely shatters Barney's spirit by tearing out his eyes. And just when things couldn't get worse for Barney, the hybrid zoner attacks him repeatedly over the course of a year and a half, torturing Barney again and again for information, even if Barney willingly gave it to him.

Under the Bridge explores Gadget's only canonicalBerserk Button, namely when someone threatens or harms her friends and deceives her, and drives it to an extreme. After several attempts of her sister Widget to kill her and the other Rangers, one of which followed a staged but real rescue mission, she decides to take matters in her own hands. She decides that the only way to save herself and her friends from Widget is to kill the latter. So she acquires an illegally imported ex-Soviet 14.5mm machine gun round and modifies it into a torpedo with a magnetic guidance system with which she plans to sink Widget's submarine Albacore. Not few readers have declared this depiction of Gadget's quite Out of Character.

In Chapter 18 of Code Geass Colorless Memories, it shows that Rai was a sweet, caring child who loved his mother and sister very much (much in the way Lelouch loved his mother and the way he dotes his sister) and got along well with his dad. Then came the attack on his town and everthing went to hell for Rai from then on. And it didn't stop there as Rai then lost his memories thanks to C.C. mindwiping his mind for his own reasons and amusement.

Chapter 30 shows this with Kallen as well after her brother went missing on a mission a few years before the start of the series.

Ace Combat: The Equestrian War takes a darker turn since chapter 7 where Firefly meets Black Star, a griffon who burned her home, killed her parents and destroyed her dreams of becoming a Wonderbolt. Fluttershy is clearly traumatized in chapter 10 after she killed Razor while trying to save Cloud Kicker's life, but that's nothing compared to Rainbow Dash suffering a heart-wrenching Heroic BSOD after being beaten up and betrayed by Gilda. Medley becomes literally broken when Gilda breaks her wings.

Turned Up to Eleven in chapter 15. Two of Derpy's best friends die, with Carrot Top dying in her arms. In fit of grief and rage, she attacks Firefly (who tried to sympathize with her!), but due to Fluttershy's intervention, she calms down. After Derpy leaves to see Dinky, Cloud Kicker, unable to damp her emotions any longer, bursts into tears, scared of hearing about several ponies dying and the scene mentioned earlier. Additionally, she fears her best friend, Lightning Bolt, may die in the war as well. Yes, the most cheerful pony among the main heroines is briefly reduced to a sobbing wreck.

In The Boy With The Magic Notebook, Maxwell decides to use his experience from saving his sister and working with the DC Universe to help the heroes of Worm. While he certainly starts off with a good effort, the attack from Shatterbird not only brings him to the brink but his efforts to heal people accidentally make it worse, leaving him hiding in an alleyway and making Super Medicine for hours on end without stopping or rest while crying the whole time through.

In the very next episode, the Doctor gets this. The circumstances differ from "Human Nature"/"The Family of Blood", but his human self still does not want to die. His pleading with Watson is heartbreaking.

Beth Lestrade in the season finale: see Broken Bird for further details. Even worse, she undergoes this twice, the second time occurring off-screen between seasons.

Poor Sherlock gets one more time, himself, in a far milder but more tear-jerking way, also in-between seasons. He spends forty-two years waiting for his wife to return to him, and he barely gets through the first ten.

The Dead are Undead has Karin Kurosaki subjected to nightmares unlike anything imaginable. Her world is turned upside down by a Zombie Apocalypse and worst of all Yuzu is shot in the face, right before her eyes. Then it just goes downhill as each new friend she makes dies in horrific ways including having their guts yanked out, being torn to shreds, being eaten alive and also Driven to Suicide.

Dead or Alive 4: The Devil Factor: Over the course of several chapters, Ayane is repeatedly Mind Raped by a newly resurrected, demonized Raidou, who sends her thoughts and nightmares about the loved ones she's lost to the point where she begins to question her sanity. It reaches its climax when he manipulates her into attempting to seduce Dante, who resists her attempts and gets her to snap out of it. By that point, however, Ayane is so scared and heartbroken over it all that she asks to stay with Dante for the night because she doesn't want to be alone.

Kari Kamiya/Celesta X during the War Games Saga of Digimon Fusion Kai. She recovers but delves into the darkside and becomes bloodlusted. She gets better again after that.

Alice, the little girl in Chapter 2 of Eagles Fall who watches a GDI sniper die before her. By Chapter 7, the sheer fatigue of the war has left her drained of all emotion, which may have played a part in her mother committing suicide. And she doesn't even realise it.

Played straight and deconstructed with Gohan. In comparison with the original series, he actually does get broken over his traumatic childhood experiences. This eventually leads to Gohan making several mistakes that result in the deaths of his friends, most of his family and the destruction of his homeworld. It effects Gohan immensely at the start of the story and causes him to be highly critical and over jugdemental of his actions. After moving into Maple House, he slowly starts to get better.

Inverted with Nana. Despite her harsh life in the facility, she is probably the most optimistic girl you'll ever meet.

Inverted with Juuichi. Instead of breaking under the facilities experiments, she grows stronger, both physically and mentally, to the point of developing a cocky and haughty personality that takes great pride in not only having survived, but even thrived in the harsh evironment.

Equestrylvania has several moments where the main characters get broken. Twilight's brother gets bitten by the Giant Bat and is driven violently insane, Fluttershy's critter friends all go rabid and slaughter each other before going out and attacking Ponyville, and worst of all, Sweetie Belle sees her childhood come to an abrupt and terrifying end.

As they run by a burning building, Sweetie Belle looks aside and sees herself and Rarity there, with their parents. It's a restaurant and everypony is having fun, laughing as the flames around them swallow them whole.

Shooting down the next street, Sweetie Belle looks at Rarity and suddenly she is much younger, and pushing Sweetie Belle down this very street in her stroller she loved so much when she was not even a year old. There is an overturned stroller on this street, and as she runs by, Sweetie Belle looks into the eyes of the zombie stepping over it.

They run by the lake, and Sweetie Belle sees herself and her parents there, feeding the ducks as strange, fishlike monsters jump out and begin to chase her and Rarity as they run by.

Roseluck gets Mind Raped by the Castle, reducing to a broken, paranoid wreck who has to be institutionalized.

Naruto/Rad in Eye Of The Fox, though he doesn’t really ‘break’ until Kira gets put into a coma, and even then he’s still optimistic since he knows Kira is going to wake up later on. Arguably Kira, when he was still 'cute'.

The Lucky Star/Fallout 3 crossover fic Falling Stars has this in spades. Kagami, Konata, and Tsukasa all get their turns being broken, and it is extremely jarring for anyone who enjoyed Lucky Star to see it happen.

Poor Pinkie takes Twilight's Breaking Lecture about her drug addiction quite hard, but continues to take the Mint-Als, until she meets Littlepip through her boosted Pinkie Sense.

This is happening to Cobalt over the course of Fallout Equestria A Childs Hope, and has been confirmed by Word of God to be pretty much the point of the story; show how the Wasteland would affect a child who can survive as well as an adult.

Happens to Hope during her imprisonment at a raider camp. However, she's soon back to being cheerful after getting back home.

The Infinite Loops: The events of the failed initial Loops were not kind to the three prospective Anchors, Roll and Blues especially. The fact that they all somehow retain glitchy, corrupted memories of said events (which isn't supposed to be possible) doesn't help, either.

Justice Society of Japan: Sayaka gets hit with this a lot harder than in canon. Not only does Hitomi snatch Kyosuke, but she then gets a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown by Sho Minamimoto, and THEN she gets kidnapped by a bunch of monsters after trying to rescue Milly.

Just Joking: Joker tries to do this to Twilight. It is yet unknown whether or not he exceeded.

Lanterns Of Equestria Blackest Night: The Black Lantern attack on Sweet Apple Acres does this to Applejack, in part because her dead family and Zecora are among the Black Lanterns. The sight of Black Lantern Zecora also does this to Apple Bloom.

Fate's case put a rather interesting twist on this trope. It was triggered by Princess Celestia in a safe environment via Armor Piercing Questions because she had noticed that Fate's psyche had been left balanced on a razor's edge by Presea. So she decided to prevent Presea from potentially causing irreparable damage to Fate's psyche when she would set this off by breaking her early on, but gently and in a situation where it would be easy to pick up the pieces.

Hibiki suffers from this in Muv Luv DYRL due to his time at a mental asylum. Not only was he subjected to be told his previous life was all in his head but he's also is disgusted with the xenophobia and racism by the Imperial Japanese forces.

Played straighter with the baby T. rexes, albeit with potentially deadly consequences. When the protagonists meet them, they have been separated from their parents and each other, and it's heavily implied that Ludlow flat-out abused them before they were rescued. Then he shoots their father in the face, right in front of them, when he comes to their defense. Deconstructed in that this fills the babies with so much pent-up rage and hatred for Ludlow that the moment they're finally freed, they promptly turn on him and tear him to pieces.

Silent Ponyville Chronicles: And how. If what happens to Pinkie in 1, and Fluttershy in 2 doesn't qualify, then this troper can't imagine anything that DOES. And from the look of it, 3 is shaping up to do the same to Twilight...

Yachiru. In more of a literal sense as her Zanpakuto beats her to a mess and it leaves Yachiru heartbroken as well as severely injured.

Starlight: Lilo starts off the story dreaming about the deaths of her parents. Then, after her assimilation by the Borg, not only is she forced to assimilate hundreds of people personally, but then to attempt to kill her best friend. This leaves Lilo in an emotionless state of detached apathy after she is rescued and severed from the Borg Collective.

Stitch himself after not only failing to rescue Lilo, but failing to find her as well.

In Stars Above, Kagami goes through this in the 2012 timeline. Tsukasa is killed right in front of her eyes, with her death serving as a Start of Darkness that culminates in the destruction of the entire world.

Let's be frank: by the later chapters, everyone in Stars Above has gone through this.

In The Stars Will Aid Their Escape, Herald does this to Fluttershy through Break Them by Talking during the attack on Canterlot, and also tries it with Celestia and the other Element Bearers (and seems to succeed in Pinkie's case). He also manages to break Twilight by exploiting the fact that if you see him without his mask on, you go insane. Thankfully, everyone recovers by the time everything's done with.

Happens quite thoroughly to Silver Spoon after her fight with Diamond Tiara, as she proceeds to watch as her mentor, Zecora, is eliminated next, quickly followed by her, just as she was in love with Spike.

Also to Apple Bloom, when Trixie turns her against Twilight for a short while before eliminating her just to stay in the game.

The Turn Of Haruhi Suzumiya: Battler starts off pretty broken, and Haruhi breaks down over the course of the story, culminating in the Tea Party.

Aside from the main characters in Young Offender, there's poor little Ann Ember. Her mother's murdered, her father will be converted into 0011, and she's been raised by Black Ghost and the Gamos into a Tyke Bomb who believes the first generation cyborgs are to blame.

Despair's Last Resort has poor Shizuka Matsuki. Her mother was killed in an accident and she was bullied throughout her entire childhood. She thinks she'll get a break at Hope's Peak, but it's implied that she witnessed people die before she escaped. Then she watches the School Life of Mutual Killing and watches someone she was incredibly close to her die. Then when her memories are erased and it seems like she can have a second chance at happiness, Monokuma hijacks the trip and forces them to kill each other. To top it all off, she ends up killing two people and is executed. The girl needs a hug.

Kumiko Akamine gets pretty broken after her best friend Chiyo is found dead. She falls into a depressive state for most of the next chapter. It's implied that other events happened during the year at Hope's Peak that messed her up.

In Checkmate, Vlad puts Danny through one of these. After first injecting Jazz with nanomachines that kill her red blood cells, and only sparing her if Danny leaves behind his friends and family to join him, Danny is forced to live at Vlad's mansion. Due to disuse while there, his ghost powers begin to go out of control, eventually leading to them going completely berserk and forcing Vlad to use a device to short out his ghost powers to get him under control. Due to not only the agony of the powers going wild, but the dream he had throughout the whole thing (it mostly occurred while he was asleep), he ends up backing into a corner and sobbing with terror, ending up in a state that caused even the almost heartless Vlad to ask himself; "What have I done?"

"Danny sat at the edge of the pool, crossed legged, watching carelessly the variety of fishes swimming about in the pool's surrounding aquarium. The tired and defeated expression on his face made him appear as if he had aged several years. There was no happiness or vigor in his eyes, leaving them a dull, lifeless blue. In short, he looked everything a broken hero would; and there was nothing more heartbreaking than that sight."

In the Light/L Slash FicLies On this happens to Light after he becomes an incubus and his feeding isn't a pleasant experience for all involved. He's terrified of losing control and killing L, and it gets worse when a friend of hispoints out some critical flaws in Kira's plan and L becomes angry with him for reasons he won't explain.

Matsuda, Soichiro and Misa all fall victim to this trope, too. Matsuda gets constantly bashed by the other members of the task force and is forced to shoot Light when he tries to kill everyone using a piece of the notebook hidden in his watch, Soichiro for all his troubles gets to live to see Light be exposed as Kira and then to have him die in his arms, and Misa mixes this trope with Alas, Poor Villain when she is forced to watch Light die, unable to help him.

Digimon Xros Wars AU 02 seems to be putting Kiriha through the ringer with the Seven Swords arc. First Kiriha has to wait through a good portion of the six month time skip in the Digital World for Taiki and the others to return from earth; shortly before they do he learns that Deckerdramon is dying. Second: He has to watch MetalGureimon get broken apart by Dorbickmon's Aegisdramon's attack. Third: MetalGureimon is absorbed into Neo Vamdemon, and despite the fact that they get him out, MailBirdramon appears to be in a coma inside the Digi Xros at the end of chapter 35. Fourth: he sees Nene bleeding out in reality after being stabbed in a dream. FIFTH: it's heavily implied that in the gaps between chapters 45 and 46 that he tried to kill Nene, though the exact details aren't clear. FINALLY: After rescuing Kiriha and Gureimon from the grimdark clutches of Anubimon, Deckerdramon is killed by Anubimon via one of his throwing daggers. Poor Kid.

Akari gets a minor one in the Seven Swords finale when Shoutmon throws himself in the line of an attack to save her..

Daneel Rush, the author of the Tamers Forever Series is absolutely vicious in his psychological torment of Rika. First he expands on her Broken Bird nature, showing that her Jerkass behaviour and suicidally competitive personality is actually due to very low self esteem brought on by her father abandoning her and from being ostracised by her peers in her old school, to the point where she has come to believe that she can't have any real friends and that the only real worth she can ever find for herself is by being the best Tamer. Then Takato comes along and for the first time she finds herself truly able to connect with another human being.(he even helps her reunite with Renamon) But her aforementioned issues nearly lead her to shatter this relationship because she just can't accept Takato being a better Tamer than her which coupled with her fear of rejection, leads her to repeatedly break both Takato's and her own heart because she just can't find peace with herself. It Gets Worse, She finally let's go of her pride and truly fall in love with Takato, but although they share three days of happiness together, it's tainted by the horrible truth that Takato is slowly and painfully dying and there is nothing Rika can do to save him, not even taking on twelve Diaboramon at once in order to protect him. It makes her eventual breakdown as she grieves for his death absolutelySOUL SHATTERING.

And from what's been seen so far, GOSPEL seems Hell bent on breaking her down even further

The Author then proceeds to take this trope to nightmarish levels (Thus continuing a proud tradition) with what happens to Mimi. In short, She is kidnapped, forced to undergo an unwilling abortion, and is left to wander the wilderness as her grief slowly drives her insaneyeesh!!

Takato- Watches Guilmon die IN THE FIRST BOOK; tries to recreate him, but ends up with a crazed BlackGuilmon instead; eventually gets killed himself near the end of Book Three and is split in to two separate kids, one of whom spends several years stuck in the Dark Ocean/Dark Area.

Noriko- Just start from the moment where she is sucked into the Digital World (without a partner), gets combined with Lucemon and BlackGuilmon, and proceed from there.

Impmon- When trying to make things right with Jeri, he learns that they can't extract Leomon's data from him (and give the girl back her partner) without killing the rookie (which they won't do, which does little to help his guilt). Not long after that, he gets infected with the X-Program, which is supposed to kill off most of the digimon. And, from the description, it is not a pleasant way to go.

Jeri- Discovers she's still carrying a fragment of the D-Reaper, and is Mind Raped by UlforceVeemon to get at it. Oh yeah, and did we mention that Milleniummon is using her to resurrect himself?

Suzie- Done very deliberately by Prometheus in an attempt to have her Dark Digivolve Lopmon (and it worked by the end of Book Four). He throws everything at her from schoolyard bully, to an evil therapist, to a nightmare-inducing digimon in order to drag up any doubts or fears she might have. This is the clearest example of Break the Cutie you can have.

Broly's Alternate Character Interpretation in the Fanfic Worthy of Legends had it broken quite a bit ever since he was a child. He was taken by Cooler so he could be raised as a killing machine under Cooler's command, and it is also implied that Broly is really an unwilling grunt of Cooler's army and views several of Cooler's actions as being completely despicable (e.g., forcing females to sleep with him or else he destroys their planet, or destroying a planet shortly after his troops enjoyed themselves). Shortly thereafter, Cooler tries to get Broly angry enough to actually fight him and unveil his strength by murdering his mother in front of Broly. It worked too well, as Broly also ended up giving Cooler a serious injury towards his knee that also resulted in Cooler placing a c-plate on his head. Later on, he was framed by Frieza during the latter's visit to Cooler's ship for murdering two dignitaries in a restroom (worse still, this happened right after Broly was sent to get red wine that was apparently something Cooler was saving up for an occasion, implying that Frieza sent Broly to get the wine specifically so it could match blood), and because of Frieza's control over the courts, he was sentenced to a hellhole planetary prison, specifically to break Broly enough to actually allow Broly to become a psychopathic killer under Cooler's control. The guards also injected him with a drug that acted as a poison that would cause his Ki to rot as a security measure to ensure he doesn't escape, and was denied any instance of a cure. His friend, Sauzaa (who, unlike in the movie, was also secretly against Cooler) also ended up sacrificing himself to save Broly by cutting himself (as his species' blood was necessary to cure the drug). He then goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge where he does a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on Cooler that culminated in tossing Cooler into the core of the planet, before taking Sauzaa's corpse and the director of the prison who was also the half-sister of Cooler and Frieza (the latter because she asked to escape with him, and was implied to have done a Heel-Face Turn, although Broly didn't entirely trust her), and it was also implied that the fight as well as his transformation resulted in the planet starting to explode. Afterwards, he went to a planet to free some Nameks who were enslaved by a despot, and eventually murdered the despot quite brutally due to the latter giving off a smirk that was far too similar to Cooler in Broly's mind, which caused Broly to break down.

Ramza himself counts; just think about it. His foster siblings (presumably) both die at Ziekden and it's his brothers' faults. He finds belonging and friends at the Southern Sky only to discover much later that not only is Delita alive, but he's become ruthless enough to massacre the Northern Sky for his own ambitions. He has to kill his demon-possessed elder brother. Many people he's considered friends or allies are either against him or in danger because of him. He's in love with a woman who's psyche has become fragile due to her beliefs being tested, and he ends up losing her to the Lucavi when her brother is temporarily killed, followed by losing his beloved sister. To top all that off, his desire to learn Dark Knight training has twice pushed him to the brink of cold-blooded murder and yet it's a key element of his strength. I'd say all that definitely qualifies as somewhat 'broken'.

Aerith's current personality is a result of her being broken long before Mothers Legacy began. For years, she was forced with train with Sephiroth, who dealt her a Curb-Stomp Battle every time as Hojo mocked her powerlessness before him.

Forward manages to break River all over again after she started healing at the end of the movie by having both River and Jayne captured and tortured by Niska, effectively undoing nearly a year's worth of mental healing for her.

Or, you know, the plot. Which involves Blaine's stalker Alex, who has a very warped idea of Kurt and Blaine's relationship. In the nineteenth chapter after several background appearances, he kidnaps Blaine, Wes, and David and locks them in his basement. Blaine accidentally got concussed, and has woken up with no memory of this.

In The Ollivander Children, Mark probably gets this worse than any of the other characters. An American Muggle who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, ends up mired in the British Ministry of Magic and charged with the crime of Presuming to be a wizard. He's imprisoned, found guilty, when he goes on the run he faces a Dementor attack, and then his Love Interest is kidnapped, and when he tries to rescue her, he ends up in jail again, which brings us to the start of The Ollivanders At War, where probably even more fun awaits.

The Screams series and Hermione Granger. Take one betrayal to Voldemort (by Neville, of all people). Add Ron's death, then mix in every torture method imaginable for her and Harry, including rape. What you get - well, in her words to Neville as he stood with Harry's wand pressed into the back of his neck: "I'm so looking forward to listening to your cries, Neville. Please fill me up and give me a lot of wonderful screams."

The Jackson Legacy: In Road Of Defiance, we read a passage of Piper seeing a vision of an alternate Leo cradling Piper's dead body, and then suddenly breaking into laughter, implying that he lost his mind.

Karkat and Sollux's backstories, but the point of the story is to reverse it.

Cronus falls under this category as well after it's revealed that he spent the vast majority of his life as a test subject for Crocker Corp's experiments, which got him addicted to smoking and drinking.

Several of the kids, notably Liotta, Holland, Britney, Faye-Anna, and Galaxy seem to be going this direction.

Minerva. Vinel gets there just a little too late...

Almost all of the characters in Claustrophobia. Brigan Knoll, Lux Solaris, Grey Slate, Darek, Maxim Bauer, Tambryn Delevinge, Harlow Bellamy, and Jayden all started off as nice characters, with some being particularly innocent (especially Grey and Harlow). As the story goes on and they get character development, they began to lose their innocence as they see their allies die and their situations groes even more dire.

Over the course of Some Semblance of Meaning, heroine Vale gets put through a lot of this. First, of course, she is selected to be in the 44th Hunger Games, alongside her younger brother's friend Kit... and crap only gets realer from there. She experiences great guilt over murdering a girl to protect Kit. Then, Kit falls out of a tree and is injured to the point where he can't walk... and is soon killed by a monstrous mutt, which traumatizes Vale. She makes new friends in the forms of District Five siblings Fen and Lark, but Lark dies by accidentally eating nightlock while under Vale's watch, and Fen leaves her to go on a suicide mission to attack the Career camp as a "take that" to the Capitol. Vale soon runs into the mutt that killed Kit, breaks down, and kills it in a berserker rage. She allies with the ex-Career Obsidian against her better judgment, only to realize that she is falling for him—which wouldn't be such an awful thing if it weren't for the Hunger Games. Oh, yeah, and she also worries that she may be going crazy from her time in the arena and has constant struggles to maintain her morality. All of this culminates into the final confrontation where, instead of killing Obsidian, Vale lashes out against the Capitol, knowing very well that the Gamemakers will forcibly and permanently silence her for it.

Ravana started off sweet and innocent, which ended when he first met his people and they immediately tried to kill him for (to him) no apparent reason. Galbatorix on the other hand, didn't start off quite as innocent as Ravana did, but there's still a significant difference between him at the beginning and end in From White To Black and especially when you decide to add The Shadowed Throne or Dragon's Blood into the mix. Strangely he seemed to be much happier during Black Dragon.

From White To Black is essentially one long example of Galbatorix being broken over and over again.

The author of Fill the Moonadores this trope and uses it whenever possible. From her own OC, Senayax, who gets it the worst in incidents ranging from being forcibly impregnated by her lover, Zexion, who is also five years older than her and being forced to eat her own grandfather to survive, things like being Driven to Suicide and almost dying after her lover's Heroic Sacrifice after holding him and begging for him to Please Wake Up seem almost trivial in comparison.

After what happens to Demyx, both as a Nobody and as a "somebody," you just want to give the poor kid a hug. While his breakdown isn't as triumphant as Senayax's, trying to clean the castle even as your hands are bleeding, chemical-burned wrecks underneath you is sob-worthy.

And considering that he was emotionally and physically abused from cradle to grave as Myde, when Xigbar finally—finally—snaps, so does the reader. Good thing there's an adorable and Fetish Fuel-laden scene after Xigbar snaps.

Considering Larxene was raped and abused by her husband of three years, and is implied to have had many other abusive relationships, she doesn't really catch much of a break, either. While she's still the same sadistic, snarky Larxene that is recognizable from Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, there's a definite air of Stepford Smiler about her, especially during her rape-based breakdowns.

To sum it up; everyone in this fic has horrible things happen to them. EVERYONE.

The Kingdom Hearts AU fic Lost Boys breaks Sora to pieces, and builds him back up in a twisted mirror of himself. After seeing his home and at least father get forcibly ripped away from him via X-Blade summoning by Ventus and Vanitas(the latter ends up possessing the former) he's hurtled off to Traverse Town as pretty much the only survivor, with his friend, Riku, of the Destiny Islands. Oh, and he's four at this point. Next eleven years he grows up into a mentally unstable teenager who is depressed, angry at the world, anti-social, suicidal, and pretty much everything he shouldn't be. He finally gets a break and life seems to get better: he meets Kairi, starts falling in love with her, gets a steady home for once, mentally recoops a bit. But then he fails to keep his promise to keep Kairi safe and watches her get kidnapped by Maleficent, shortly after nearly dies TWICE and experiences severe pain along with it, then he loses Riku, gets even FURTHER depressed, to make things so much better Maleficient mind rapes him by showing him how he's supposed to be canon-wise, and due to it, along with learning Riku's switched sides, attempts suicide. You think he'd finally get a break, right? NO, He DIDN'T die, as much as he wanted to. He finds Riku, who by now is possessed by Ansem, who "helps" him find Kairi. They later split up again, and when they get back together he ends up nearly losing his heart to keep her safe and experiences unbearable pain in the process. Then, when chasing after Ansem, he gets drawn into an illusion of the islands and breaks down into a maniacally giggling, teen-child psychological mess. Oh, and facing Ansem himself once and for all? He gets so broken, Anti-Form just leaps out and mauls Ansem to death while Kairi watches in horror, and Sora finally just ends up collapsing from the exertion.And this is just the first one.

Later in the sequel, Broken Heroes, you can add Ventus to the list. Ventus has lived in Sora's heart this whole time, and understands EXACTLY where Sora is willing to go with revenge. He feels nothing but regret for his life, and even though he has his spots of hope and happiness, he also feels Terra and Aqua are pretty much gone. He was so guilt-ridden he WANTED Riku to kill him with his own Keyblade when he awoke. To quote the author:

"He is insanely guilt-ridden from the fact he killed so many people and ruined Riku and Sora's lives because of his choice. He just wants to feel like he hasn't screwed up, that people have gotten the justice they deserve. "

And then(much later after several adventures and still getting chewed out by Sora) Ventus is brutally injured by Saďx, who he still believed to be friends with, and ends up dying in Sora's arms still thinking he was unforgiven. He's brought back, thanks to Aqua, gets to see her one last time, then DIES AGAIN. Granted, Sora finally forgives and lets go of his hate because of this- being replaced with just depression and regret -but it's crippling to everyone who witnessed it. Especially Aqua, who goes from badass to broken in an instant.

In Omega Dawn, Both Ruxik, Riku's Nobody, and Maleficent attempted to break Kairi by killing Sora, defiled his body, attacking Destiny Islands, force her to fight a war against the Heartless, including Omegasis, the biggest and most ruthless heartless, who represent all evil, and later told her that they could bring back Sora, in order to make her stab herself with her own keyblade so she would become a Heartless and so, having the ultimate powers of the Princessess of Hearts at their hands. They almost succeeded on making her insane, but luckily, she regained her senses and fought back.

First, there's Aqua who ends up the most traumatized by Silent Hill. Not only does she face the general craziness of the town, but she is nearly killed by her best friend and breaks her keyblade in a fight against Pyramid Head. The resulting mental and physical damage then allows Vanitasto brainwash her into becoming his dragon. She was later freed from his control, but it's revealed in the last chapter that she is now suffering from severe PTSD.

Then just to drive the knife in, just when Aqua finally appears to be recovering in the sequel, Vanitas kidnaps her. Not only does he drag the Land of Departure into Silent Hill's otherworld, but he also viciously mindrapes her by forcing her to experience the pain and deaths of other people. He then devotes all his energy into convincing Aqua that her friends never cared about her. When Aqua's attempt to sleep with Vanitas to stop him from killing Ven winds up being the least traumatic experience she's gone through, it says a lot.

Between The Shrouded Path and its sequel, Sora goes through this. Not only are he and his friends drawn into Silent Hill, but he is taken hostage by Vanitas and used as bait for Kairi. She attempts to rescue him, but is defeated by Vanitas and ends up losing her heart in front of Sora. Then, when Sora finally escapes with her unconscious body, he is forced to leave Riku behind. Is it any surprise Sora's a miserable wreck?

In Those Who Fight Monsters, Sora returns to Silent Hill with Ven to try to rescue his friends. It isn't long before the town sends Pyramid Head after poor Sora.

The Takotsuboya K-ON Trilogy, over the course of three interlinked stories, breaks most of the K-ON! cast, though it does give them some hope at the end. Mio's is mostly self-inflicted, Azusa's is the primary focus. Only Mugi escapes relatively unscathed.

To date, Rochelle had to witness Chris getting his armed ripped off by a Witch when he saved her and Coach's lives. And then she had to hear his cries of agony as his arm was cauterized. And Ellis had his optimism in humanity challenged many times, starting with the ruthless female robber to getting almost tortured then slaughtered by Jerry. Then he had to watch Jerry die.

The Legend of Spyro: A New Dawn: Cyros manages to do this to Ember in one chapter, first revealing Cynder's anger towards her and forcing Spyro and Cynder to break her heart by revealing the truth about their relationship and tell her she can't be with Spyro. It continues next chapter were she's locked up in a mine and beat half to death by a Gargoyle. Thankfully, Siria the Phoenix Queen snaps her out of it.

In a prologue story for The Legend of Spyro: Zonoya's Revenge, Ember gets put through this due to her attempts to win Spyro's love. However, it ultimately does end up being for the better, as she realizes that Spyro isn't her true love after all, letting her move on and be with Flame, who really does love her.

Fortitude: And how. Just when you think things can't get worse for Link and Zelda, they do.

There's numerous examples, but the most fitting is when the couple are told there is no cure for Link's illness, and Zelda has to face the prospect of losing her husband and raising Link's son by herself, despite doing everything she can to prevent this from happening throughout all of Fortitude.

Also, Heather. The poor girl gets whipped. Not only is this horrible for her, it's horrible for Zelda because Heather was taking punishment because Zelda defied Ashton.

Skeletons In The Closet: Kim, a hamster who lived a life of complete isolation, breeding and experiments. It's no wonder why Sunil wants to help her ghost find peace.

Sunil himself reveals the fact that he's so skittish is that he can see ghosts and has been a victim of Mind Rape. On top of this, he has to help Kim find closure by searching for her dead body hidden in the basement of Littlest Pet Shop. Finally, she requests he cries at her funeral. Sunil finds himself sobbing for 25 minutes in the pouring rain over the grave of a girl he barely even knows and later tearfully blames himself for ruining the happy atmosphere of LPS by helping find Kim's body. The icing on the cake is when Sunil gets molested the very same thing that mind raped him when he moved to New York City.

Happens to Lauren in Mad World, Trick uses his powers to write that the Garuda will be defeated by a champion (who turns out to be Bo). The Garuda is aware of this, and knows that Lauren will be involved. So it and Thaneutterly destroy her life trying to prevent it. Thane brutally murders 19 of her colleagues/friends in the Congo, and then murders her. She is then brought back by the Fae, is subsequently informed by them she is now their slave, and spends the next 5 years as slave facing their constant racism. Thane returns murders an additional 20 people, who look just like the victims from the Congo (including her) and arranges the bodies in the same manner. He then finally captures her, subjects her to Mind Rape and horrific torture. She is left very broken by all this, and is distinctly unamused when Trick confesses his role in it.

Phoebe in Under Coverof Darkness, considering she woke up alone in an abandoned hospital after the apocalypse happens and the next day has to kill a friend to keep her from turning into a zombie. It has gone downhill from there, considering she gets impaled with an arrow, scars her face, gets her nose broken, breaks up with Arnold because he got another girl pregnant, loses half her ear from a mauler, is wanted for murder, and is tortured when arrested.

Terry received a particularly bad one by a female monster named Merida Malicestorm that controlled a classic high school bully clique. The clique resembled PNK (albeit they were A LOT meaner) and pulled a prank on Terry specifically in a Carrie-like fashion that traumatized him and clearly shattered his perception on romance. This prank also resembled ROR's prank during the movie which implies that ROR's prank angered him so bad due to re-opening the wound.

Laura is hinted to possibly have something like happen to her in the past that had a lasting effect on her in the form of anxiety attacks

Each member of the Exceeda Zeta Sorority will experience this in subsequent chapters.

Katy was visibly distraught when her Love Interest Terri of the Perry twins was severely injured due to the accident at the science labs.

An interesting example is from After The Gala. It's interesting because of what event from the series, Fluttershy's eruption of anger at the Gala, is turned into one of these. When she calms down and realized what she did, the poor girl is hit with this hard and reduced to a sobbing wreck to the point her friends can't even begin to think of how to comfort her. Thankfully, she's unbroken by her friends and Princess Celestia.

All-American Girl: The Foalnapping Incident and misinterpreted "attempted rape" gave DJ PTSD; the subsequent custody trial a few months later shattered her psyche, pushing her over the Despair Event Horizon, giving her further grief and permanently changing her personality from cheerful and outgoing to jaded and sullen.

Though she's apparently regained some of her old personality over the years.

Twilight's gotten a continuous chain of these in the early chapters of Arads Stardust, starting with witnessing a Chryssalid slaughter some civilians, then having to kill it in self-defence, and going on from there. It happens again in chapter 33 when she recalls Lana and Matt fighting the EXALT infiltrator and starts wondering if Shining Armor also has a killer within.

Seems to have also happened to Rarity around the same time, but not as badly, and she's long since recovered from the bad event.

A Voice Among The Strangers: Jessica's first ponies she meets are the Flim Flam brothers, who are running a monster horror show. They added her to the monster roster, treating her poorly. This left her with a fear of unicorns and their magic, and a general distrust of ponies.

In Cadance Of Cloudsdale Cadance realizes that the Crystal Ponies have undergone this, and worries she doesn't truly deserve to lead them.

"In simple words, she had suffered a temporal stroke, leaving the two halves of her brain in separate time zones. One was always in the present, while the other... wandered. Sometimes she babbled about events that had yet to happen, or screamingly re-experience past horrors, not just from her own life, but of Eldritch nightmares from eons before Equestria's founding. It was a painful, debilitating and humiliating fate. But at times, the ability to experience the future before it happened was extremely useful."

Princess Celestia, briefly, after seeing Marcus' memories of the atrocities the TCB!ponies are committing against his people.

Canon!Lyra to a lesser extent. Not only does Marcus' account of what's happening to his world as well as finding out her counterpart was killed shake her up, but there's also how, in "War March and Past Sins", she realizes that she could have become an Unwitting Instigator of Doom if she had gone on that scuba diving trip where her TCB counterpart uncovered a shipwreck that held the Bagof Tirek onboard.

The chapter "For Whom the Bell Tolls" reveals this is the case for TCB!Twilight (and by extension, the rest of the Mane Six), owing to having their bodies hijacked by TCB!Celestia, who implanted dark personalities into their bodies and left the girls themselves imprisoned in their own minds, unable to do anything besides witness every atrocity the homonculi driving their bodies commit in the Queen's name. Twilight herself is all but reduced to begging and pleading desperately with Canon!Luna to kill her to end everyone else's suffering. And then Not!Twilight shows Luna the gruesome history of the ponification potion's development, capped off with the three thousand human test subjects it took to perfect it...

Lady Tourmaline, a classic Silk Hiding Steel aristocratic heroine is raped by Morion, gets a Hope Spot when she is able to escape to Equestria with her beloved Prince Crimson and develop a technology with him that allows him to compensate for his mutiliation, then gets broken all over again when she is forced to witness her lifelong lover's slow descent into madness and evil as Emperor Sombros.

Prince Crimson Quartz starts as a bright and loveable colt, becomes an idealistic Science Hero, and then suffers the rape of his lifelong love Tourmaline, maiming in the removal of the horn which lets him be a mage, and after his Hope Spot with Tourmaline in Equestria and on the battlefield defeating Morion, becomes increasingly evil and insane as a result of his traumas and finally merges with the Shadows to become evil Emperor Sombros.

Princess Luna, who has loved Crimson Quartz almost all his life, thinks that he finally returns her romantic love: instead he seduces her, pretends to love her, leads her down a path of depraved evil and madness, and in the end casts her out, SPECIFICALLY to destroy her attunement to the Elements. He succeeds, which forces Luna to instead help her sister kill Sombros. At the end of this, Luna's emotions and sanity are so utterly shattered that within two decades of increasing alienation from everyone, she becomes Nightmare Moon.

Luna, meanwhile, comes almost completely pre-broken. Her past experiences have left her fearing that her own sister is a monster, causing her to assume the worst about everything she does. The real reason she went on the rampage as Nightmare Moon? A thousand years of solitary confinement left her unstable enough to fall under Celestia's Mind Control, forcing her to play the villain her sister had invented and get the Elements of Harmony unleashed upon her... an action that stripped her of her immortality. Learning that last bit completely shatters what little trust she had in her Celly. (Of course, it's morecomplicatedthan that...)

Harmony's Warriors: Having your mother shot to death in front of you will do that. Poor Carrot Cake...

Hormones chronicles Spike's descent into the depths of depravity. He begins the story like a normal sexually frustrated teenager, and through a series of inviting opportunities, ends up committing some very perverse acts. This culminates in chapter 4 (titled: "Last Resort") where Spike molests Winona and is caught by Applejack. Fearing the consequences, he hangs himself.

In Sunset, Twilight is broken through a series of events that lead to her finding out that she is actually a golem Celestia planned to sacrifice, which causes her to almost murder both Luna and Celestia.

In For Want of a Dawn, The events of Sunset have come to pass, but Twilight is FURTHER broken by being taken to an alternate reality where everyone wants to kill her, including her friends; except for Rainbow Dash, whom she meets in hell after RD was killed by an alternate Twilight. Could be a happy ending except Rainbow is then killed AGAIN.

In chapter 7 of The Order of Koaxia, Descartes begins their encounter by trying to deconstruct Fluttershy's worldview. He fails. Horribly.

Twilight in Pages Of Harmony subjects all her friends to this in order to extract the essence of the Elements from them. And each of them is broken in different, terrifying ways before they die. Even Sweetie Belle and her assistant Spike are subject to this due to being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Nightmare attempts this several times in The Party Never Ended, on both Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie. By the end, this backfires epically when it comes to Pinkie.

The Pony POV Series is notable in that, thanks to Discord, this has happened to every mane and side character in the show! This includes Trixie, who was broken personally by Discord to the point Twilight had to enter her mind and manually free her. Later on, and unrelated to Discord directly, Fluttershy gets broken and turns into a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds named Princess Gaia/Nightmare Whisper who serves as the second Big Bad.

Pony POV Series Chaos Verse: Fluttercruel breaks down crying after being forced to reveal her true form to Fluttershy to scare her out of the nightmare Nightmare Phobia put her in, ruining Fluttercruel's only chance to get to know her mother.

This happens to Twilight and Rainbow Dash in the Alternate Universe FicRainbooms and Royalty, in which Rainbow Dash is Celestia's student, not Twilight. Since Princess Celestia was in Cloudsdale rather than in Canterlot (as in the show), Twilight's magic rages unchecked until she exhausts herself. The examiners for Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns admits her because they fear she would be a danger to society untrained. She feels that her cutie mark, which she earned during the fiasco, represents her potential to harm other ponies, rather than her talent with magic. Rainbow and Applejack soon set her straight. Rainbow is broken more than once. First, after Nightmare Moon forces Rainbow Dash, reeling from the loss of Celestia, to publicly plead with her to not brainwash Shining Armor, Ditzy Doo, and two Pegasus royal guards, only to do so anyway and reveal that she only wanted to humiliate the proud Pegasus before Ponyville. The second break occurs when the corrupted Shining Armor reveals that he knew all about Rainbow Dash's crush on him, and that there was never any chance of him reciprocating his feelings, as she was little more than a child to him and because he was already spoken for. Note that despite this, and despite the fic is darker than the show, it not too dark, and remains closer to the show's Lighter and Softer feel than that of a Dark Fic.

School Daze: Screwy in the last few chapters. She suffers internal hemorrhages of increasing severity whenever she tries to communicate normally. Narrowly averted in the end.

In Sleepless, Zippoorwhill is broken when she finds bodies of Alula and Twist in the Everfree Forest.

Babs Seed in one of the sequels, Manehattan Blues, when she's raped by the mafia boss and his bodyguards.

This nearly happens with Ditzy in Trails And Trials, being on the receiving end of Destiny's constant bullying in the first chapter and later breaking down crying in front of a crowd of ponies after accidentally spilling all of her undelivered mail. Once Twilight shows up, things start to slowly look up for her, until things take a turn for the worse by the end of chapter 5.

Twilight Then Twilight Now Universe: It turns out that Ponyland-era's Applejack's "silly filly" behavior is due to her actually being the Equestria-era Applejack, who has been immortal for a thousand years and steadily traumatised by the increasing decline of ponies. Is it any wonder she is tempted by an offer to Set Right What Once Went Wrong, allowing her to prevent the Fall of Equestria?

Ascentia does this constantly in Doomsday Ascending. Explaining the harsh nature of the universe outside her little bubble to Twilight in the prologue. Explaining that war brings death with it to Fluttershy. Dragging Rainbow Dash away from what is insinuated to be a suicide attempt, sneering at her rationale.

Changing Times: Fluttershy, when she's eventually rejected. Rainbow Dash broke after rejecting Fluttershy. Twilight has her own moments, especially in chapter five.

Pretty much every humanized MLP character get's a moment like this in Stockholm.

Warming Up is an sexually explicit fanfic (the kind with an actual story) where Twilight and Spike starts having a relationship. What was initially a light-hearted (abet with explicit sex scenes) romantic fic takes a dark turn, when Spike is separated from Twilight, then due to him being in heat he starts attracting unwanted attention from the rest of the Mane 6, even getting raped by Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie.

An author who uses this trope a lot is Kalash93, especially in his War Is Hell stories. See a cute, young, happy, innocent, naive, character? Let the breaking commence!

Welcome To The Brothel is a heartfelt letter written by the protagonist to his mother. By the end, it becomes obvious just how fucked up and broken the war has made him.

Its followup story, Relax, actually shows the "fixing" of a cutie from a shell-shocked mass of nerves into a stable youth. It's implied that the portagonist's sessions with the prostitute keep him sane.

His most triumphant example is Shell Shock. Fluttershy joins the army in order to protect her friends. She is sent into a war and Forced to Watch atrocities being committed. When she finally get her chance to save a single life, she instead chooses to kill an unarmed fleeing zebra to safe her own life. The fic ends with her a sobbing wreck.

Break the Cutie seems to be a trope invoked in general by the Friendship is Magic fanart and fanfiction community. Many of the longer stories out there invoke this plenty, and more than a few do so as a method to provide Fetish Fuel.

The author of Introverted must hate the kids for the sheer amount of angst.

Quotidian is one long exercise in Hidan driving Temari to the breaking point by messing with her first mentally and then physically, (She contributes by taking so many stimulant shots her body breaks down and fails * just after* he decides he's not going to kill her yet. It works so well that she ends up attacking her brother Kankurou after hallucinating he's Hidan and then ending up in hospital and under psyche review (which she passes through merit of knowing the correct answers). If Hidan could be seen as a cutie, this could also work both ways as he ends up so obsessed with the idea she can kill him that he breaks down when he finds out she can't, and that his obsession is no sign from his god, just him being a bit of a Stalker with a Crush, even if he doesn't see it himself. Oh and he managed to agonize about betraying his beliefs in order to keep her alive (because he wants her to kill him later, naturally.)

Evangelion 303: Shinji was a pretty nice, considerate guy. However when he was a little kid his mother died and his father entrusted his care to another person and later sent him away to school. When the story begins he makes new friends and finds his life's love. And then her girlfriend's life -and his- went to Hell: Asuka's war plane crashes and she falls into a coma for several months. He spends most that time by her bedside, praying for she waking up. When she does, she is so unstable and wrecked with survivor guilt that she abuses him and herself. When she can not stand it anymore she tries to commit suicide. He stops her but she runs away straight after, intending to leave his life forever. Fortunately things got better for both from that point onward.

Played straight, averted, and subverted alike in Neon Genesis Evangelion R. While Lyn and Aoi both go through some pretty serious breaking (along with mainstays Asuka and Shinji) they may come out of it alright (depending on which ending you're following).

Walking In The Shadow Of Dreams: In hindsight, it probably wasn't the best idea to let a jaded and cynical Shinji guest lecture about his experiences as an Eva pilot. It's quite an accomplishment to make an entire room of trained pilots break into tears.

Dark Truth: One night, Luffy is tortured and nearly killed by his crew, who are possessed by the ghosts of a long-dead pirate crew who seek revenge on all captains traveling through their haunting grounds. He survives, but is a lethargic shell of his former self, and his crew can't remember what happened that night. Also contains Squick, horror, And I Must Scream, To the Pain, Fate Worse Than Death, and especiallyEt Tu, Brute?.

One Piece: Parallel Works has AkiChung-Feng, who has been through hell pretty much since she was born. In short, she's born as an illegitimate child, loses her mother to a Soap Opera Disease when she is sixteen, is forced to join the Capricorns with her cousin, Showtarou, so she can get to her aunt's house for her Arranged Marriage, is kidnapped by Kaoru and Mina before their Heel-Face Turn and the Baba Yaga, is forced away from the Capricorns to go through her arranged marriage, is almost raped while trying to save Enlai's sister, and she has to face a second Arranged Marriage, which is arranged by her own father. And, then there's the fact that she and Heathcliffe are Star-Crossed Lovers because of Aki's family.

While not exactly a Cutie in the first place, an incident with a pack of angry Luxrays left one of Holon's Gym Leaders much worse for wear. Cue the stacks of multipliers that made the next five years a living hell...

To a lesser extent there's Torsten "Tory" Lund, the twentysomething who as a child constantly had an inferiority complex to his brother Lor (in adulthood it turned into a belief that he had botched up in a major way and that he was frankly a disgrace to his brother, who he believed to be a great scientist). He was dragged off to work for Team BDV, subjected to the wrath of Lemmy on multiple occasions, and after taking a good long time to reflect upon himself and how much he messed up. The kicker? He does actually meet Lor somewhere down the line, and finds much to his horror that he's a mildly mad scientist and immortal, doing grunt work for the deity he once tried to control, and nowadays goes under the name 'Zero'. Naturally, he proceeds to give Torsten a Reason You Suck Speech and basically tells him to man up.

Between My Brother And Me: The Swordsmen's plan to do this to May goes like this: 1) grab her wrists and make her unable to move, 2) cut her arms up with sharp knives, 3) punch her in the ribs until they nearly crack, 4) track her down and don't stop until she's DEAD.

Poor Blaze. He's been used and manipulated by his girlfriend to unleash Blue Fire Frenzy. brought it upon herself by taking Cindy in the first place, it's still harrowing to see a ten-year-old girl being abused by her own Pokémon. Eventually she snaps and gives Cindy a severe tongue-lashing. She does get better, though.

Jenna’s backstory reveals she was crushed when her trainer died, and Patch's flashback shows her breaking down when she realized where Kim's parents' arguments were headed.

Patch was originally Anonimo's Pokémon, and was named Snap. He was a firsthand witness to Anonimo's Start of Darkness, and broke down when Kim died and Jenna disappeared. Eventually, the use of his name disappeared, and he became bitter when Anonimo heaped abuse on a newly-captured baby Cyndaquil (Cindy). After said 'Quil's beating, he was chased off after his eye was harmed and his Pokeball was crushed. It hits him hard to the present day.

A male variant in Morphic. Gabriel is the "snap" variety; he does not take well to Brian's death.

Almost everything from Chapter 7 onwards could be considered Break the Cutie for Gabriel. His dad dies, he gets kidnapped, two of his friends die when they come to save him, and then he nearly dies after figuring out how to use fire attacks.

In Plasma's Folly when N was a child, Ghetsis gave him numerous Pokémon to play with. All of these Pokémon were suffering from life-threatening injuries, and died shortly thereafter. N is still haunted by these experiences, as evidenced in "Verdict".

After what happened to Mitzi, Ree definitely qualifies for this in Playthings Series.

Silver Blood: It's implied that Wally and Brendan suffered at least one traumatic event together. While Brendan managed to keep much of his old, bubbly personality, the innocent, adorable Wally shown in other media has grown into a much colder and more serious teenager.

Tegast from What Lies Beyond the Walls. His entire family is slaughtered in his debut chapter, forcing him to start wandering around Mossflower alone. At that point he's forced to kill, steal, and avoid contact with others all while trying to deal with the loss of his little brother. On top of that, a fox tries to rape him, and later on, he ends up getting stabbed after stumbling across Krassak's monitor lizards. Had he not found Grustur, he definitely would've perished.

The main OC in thisScream fanfic goes through this. At the beginning of Arc One, she's a happy, if sarcastic teenage girl with friends and a caring family. By the beginning of the final arc, she's just...sad. And a bit mutilated.

In Crisis Chloe is physically abused and mentally shattered by Kal's sexual assault, but when you think it is bad enough, Clark admits that he is not being controlled and actually wanted to hurt her. Chloe tortures him with kryptonite but it only makes it worse because despite what he did to her and she would never admit it, she still cares for him and it hurts her to hurt him. Chloe and her father both lost their jobs thanks to Lionel, they are about to lose their house and the Torch is stripped clean.

Kitty Pryde is getting this trope in spades after being publicly outed as a mutant.

More generally, Mary Jane has been enduring this trope for pretty much all of her life. She's grown up in a broken home, suffered the stresses of being a Triple Shifter, been the target of public hate campaigns, been sexually harassed by men old enough to be her father, and nearly had her very identity shattered by Jack O' Lantern when he targeted her with a sophisticated revenge plan.

For some reason, Jim Kirk is given a Break the Cutie back story to explain his Jerk With A Heartof Gold behavior. Witnessing a massacre on Tarsus IV, child abuse, mentally ill mother, and rape as backstory are all favorite plotlines. There is even a link on the Star Trek fanfic recs to a Hurt!Jim site consisting entirely of fics involving Kirk getting hurt. Chekhov tends to take a lot of pain, too.

Eddard. He's captured by Trowzer's forces (although rescued later on), some of his friends are killed, his village is burned down by Dracolin and his mother is presumably killed, he kills someone merely because he was angry, and then the only Yoshi he considered to be his father is executed right in front of him. To top all that off, Eddard gets his brains blown out, which is especially jarring since the author made it seem like he'd end up surviving through the story.

Black. It isn't until around chapter 51 that this trope hits him hard, and it gets worse as the story progresses. By chapter 55, Black is completely broken, and he even went as far as to list every single bad thing that has happened to him since Yellow died.

Geno and Kooper. They try so hard to drive out Trowzer's forces from Yoshi's Island, but in the end it proves to be pointless when both of them are cornered and later captured by Marcus' commandos. It doesn't help that both of them were forced to watch Ned get executed, which sent both of them into a Heroic BSOD.

In The Kid's Going To Be Alright. Otto from the beginning of the fic is heartbroken by Tuddrussel and Larry, who seemingly abandoned him in the last episode, "Orphan Substitute". Larry and Tuddrussel stead-fastly make things worse for the kid as they try to understand what is going on with him. Otto becomes sensitive, withdrawn, irritable, and has a couple of breakdowns due to Tuddrussel's Jerk Ass behavior and Larry's motherly/snooping nature. First when Larry and Tuddrussel argue over Otto within earshot of him and Tuddrussel says some cruel things that drops Otto's emotions over the edge. Second being when Otto figures out that Larry and Tuddrussel had been snooping through his most personal possession, his scrap book from the orphanage and memories of Sister Thornly's abuse runs through his terrified mind. It's not until the info is dragged out of him by Tuddrussel that the reason why Otto feels so betrayed and hurt by Tuddrussel is because he allowed Otto to get kidnapped by his former caretaker, Sister Thornly, who whipped him for running away. But Otto didn't have the heart to tell them. Thankfully, with a little love and patience, he gets better.

Mew Scarab, who starts as a shy and friendless girl, makes close friends with the rest of Egypt's Mew Mews. They then are torn away from her by a curse, and she hardens up, choosing to go on a solitary path for revenge.

A Codette World Tour: Cody didn't get on the team with his crush, was vilified by Alejandro, lost Gwen to Duncan, and got his heart stomped on by Gwen on TV, then lost Bridgette to Alejandro. Bridgette gets close seconds for losing Geoff, finding out her anger at Cody was misplaced, her friend turning into a jerk, then falling for Alejandro only to learn he manipulated her.

Towards the end of the first story in Gensokyo 20XX, and, after she escaped to the Outside World, while she waiting for her maternal figure, Yukari Yakumo, Reimu's health started to decline and she was soon hospitalized, caused by the stress, misery, and grief of all that is and has happened to her. To further drive the point home, she was starting to lose hope of ever seeing her maternal figure again and her declining health may not have permitted her to live.

In 20XXI, we have Eirin, which ends in suicide, Yukari, when she goes insane, and then Yuuka who just decided to leave Chen alone so she could walk off and die.

In 20XXII, we have Nitori, who attempts suicide

In 20XXIV, we have Ran, after she was nearly raped, leading for her to attempt suicide multiple times.

Also from 20XXIV, we have Chen, twice, with latter time driving her to the point of suicide. Towards the end of 20XXIV, apparently an age-regressed Reimu going through a Break the Cutie time when she starts to show signs of a mental illness.

Fallout Transformers: Danny. By far the most idealistic of the group, just being with Wheeljack for the entirety of her childhood and never suffering any early losses. After she joins the main cast, though, Goddard dies early on. She grieves, but grows closer to Wildrider and the rest of the team. And then Wheeljack dies sending her and the rest of the group to another timeline. Like the rest of the humans, she gets professionally diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. And, like that isn't enough, she has to deal with meeting an alternate-universe version of Wheeljack when they shift to another timeline. Yeah.

Reversal Of Fate might as well be called a Break the Cutie: The fan fiction as with each world, Sakura has experienced a lot of heartwrencing shit from physical to psychological damage to herself.

Shatterheart already has R!Syaoran pre-broken from the group's hatred and ostracization of him. In story, he gets his trust broken by Kurogane, the only person who cares for him, his heart broken by him, kidnapped and tortured for sixteen hours, suffer from PTSD and watch his loved ones die.

The whole reason for Gold Psy's actions in Blog Cast were to cause this for Power, in order for him to move on and grow to be the man he's meant to be; The Double Road Alchemist.

Chaos AU: Christine is a hacker who worked in a program for young computer programers founded by Nathan Ingram. She idolized him. Then her mentally ill father was killed in a police shoot-out. In front of her. Sadly, he was the parent who cared about her, her mother was an abusive alcoholic that presumably drunk herself to death. Out of sorrow, Christine becomes a junkie. Finch finds her and checks her into a rehab program in New York. A week later, 9/11 happens. Strangely, she's somewhat stable. Somewhat.

Game Over: Shard isn't the well of pure dark aura that DC desires so much because of Kumori, no. Because Shard's naive to the point of idiocy, she's never tapped into her inner darkness; because of this, it has never mixed with her light aura, resulting in a high delicacy fordark aura devourers like DC. In order to prevent DC's desire for her influencing his decisions, especially since his romantic interest has shifted, SC is working on a way to make Shard tap into her darkness, mixing it with light and preventing DC from finding it so appealing. So far he has a good lead: her crippling fear of being alone.

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